Algorithmic Scheduling Software Slashes Hours and Pay for Language Interpreters Nationwide
Why It Matters
Across the United States, a growing number of hourly workers are confronting the economic consequences of employer-deployed scheduling algorithms — software designed to minimize labor costs that critics say transfers financial risk directly onto workers. The trend extends well beyond any single industry, touching interpreters, hotel cleaners, call center employees, and others who depend on predictable hours to meet basic financial obligations.
For language interpreters at LanguageLine Solutions, the arrival of new scheduling software has meant abrupt pay cuts, fragmented workdays, and uncertainty that has forced some workers to choose between paying utility bills and keeping the internet connection they need to do their jobs remotely.
What Happened
Yves Valerus, a Haitian Creole-English interpreter based in Brooklyn, worked a stable full-time schedule with set pay and benefits for roughly a year and a half at LanguageLine Solutions. Beginning in 2025, that changed. The company, which counts the UK’s National Health Service and multiple New York City agencies among its clients, said it experienced reduced customer demand and implemented new scheduling software.
The software introduced what LanguageLine describes as “mandatory involuntary time off,” which appeared on employee schedules under the paycode “AEX.” Workers received little advance notice — sometimes finding out only hours before a shift, or returning from lunch to discover no remaining work for the day. Because the notices came so late, workers said they could not arrange alternative employment, schedule appointments, or otherwise plan around the lost time. Workers placed on AEX receive no pay for those hours.
Anna Manciano, a Polish-English interpreter who spent eight years at LanguageLine, said the instability became severe enough that she quit in 2025 after the birth of her first child. The company also barred interpreters from working for competing translation services under its code of conduct, limiting their ability to supplement lost income.
In a statement, LanguageLine said it is navigating “headwinds facing our entire industry, including new policies instituted by the current administration,” and has adjusted schedules to reflect lower-than-expected demand. The company also said it is piloting the use of artificial intelligence for routine interpretation work — a development that has alarmed workers already dealing with reduced hours.
By the Numbers
- 18%: The decline in Valerus’s income from LanguageLine between 2024 and 2025, based on tax forms reviewed by NPR.
- 15 seconds: The mandatory minimum break between calls currently in place for interpreters — down from a previous gap of one to two minutes.
- Eight years: The length of Manciano’s tenure at LanguageLine before she resigned due to scheduling instability.
- 3 miles: The extra distance Valerus said she travels on foot to find discounted groceries after her pay was cut.
- 3 children: The number of dependents Valerus supports as a single mother, making income predictability essential.
Zoom Out
The LanguageLine situation reflects a broader national trend that researchers have been tracking for over a decade. Daniel Schneider, a project lead at Harvard University’s SHIFT project — which collects data on hourly work conditions — described the interpreters’ experience as capturing “all these transformations that have happened to hourly work in America” within a single company.
Hotel workers have faced similar pressures. Members of UNITE HERE Local 26 have pushed back against software that dictates room-cleaning sequences in ways that increase physical strain and injury risk. Carlos Aramayo, president of that union, testified before the Senate that such outcomes are “not pre-ordained outcomes of the software” but “management decisions.”
Labor organizers say their experience fighting algorithmic scheduling over the past decade has prepared them to confront a new and potentially larger challenge: the deployment of generative AI in workplaces. That concern echoes broader debates over technology’s economic disruption, as workers across sectors press for a seat at the table before new systems are rolled out.
LanguageLine’s parent company, Teleperformance, was previously accused of attempting to surveil remote workers and later reached an agreement with a labor union federation over those practices.
What’s Next
Valerus and a group of her colleagues are seeking to organize a union through the Communications Workers of America, citing scheduling instability, reduced pay, and the company’s announced AI pilot program as motivating concerns. The unionization effort is ongoing.
LanguageLine stated it has a health and safety committee that reviews workplace matters, and said it does not want interpreters to experience the level of strain workers have described. Whether the company will adjust its scheduling practices or AI plans in response to worker organizing remains to be seen.
As AI tools expand across customer-service and language industries, federal and state policymakers face growing pressure to address algorithmic management practices — an issue that labor advocates say has moved from a niche concern to a mainstream labor rights question.